Royal Icing Lion Decals

It’s been a busy past few months and I’ve been MIA with school, graduating, and being in Italy for a month, but I’m finally back in action with my mind on everything sugar and ready to get back into the kitchen! This post I’m doing a tutorial on how to make these lions out of royal icing that can be used to put on cookies, cupcakes or whatever your heart desires. Hopefully I don’t royally screw it up and you’ll understand how to do it. I tend to either over explain or not give too details, and I’m hoping I can do this without boring you.

The first things you need are a stencil of a lion head shape. It looks along the lines of a bear head shape though. If you can see the picture below it makes it seem like it’s going to end up being Winnie the Pooh or something. But it’s not going to be Winnie the Pooh but a lion instead. I drew mine freehand style, as you can see some of the heads didn’t cut it and got scribbled out. If you don’t want to draw it then I’m sure there are images available via Google you can find.

The next thing you need is a batch of royal icing. Make your favorite recipe or use this one HERE. To get the colors I just had 2 bowls with a small amount of royal icing in each. In one bowl I added yellow and a little brown. In the other bowl I added orange and a little brown. I added brown into both colors mainly because the yellow and orange were really bright and I wanted to tone it down a little by adding in some brown.

The first step is to take the yellow/brown royal icing and fill in each head stencil.

Put the stiff orange icing in a piping bag with a small open star tip. Really the smallest that you have. The tip I used says it’s a size 16, but then again I got it as a part of a set when I was in Europe a few years ago so it might not be the same here in the US. Take the orange icing and pipe little shells all the way around the yellow face. Let it dry over night, best to let it dry for 24 hours.

For the face I just used my edible black marker and drew it on. You can certainly tint some of the royal icing black and pipe on the face as well. When they are completely dry you can use them to decorate whatever you want. Cupcakes, cake, or what I did with cookies. I just put royal icing on to some cookies and while the icing is still wet (as soon as I was done piping it) I just stuck on a lion and let it dry for another 24 hours before eating. Give these a try and let me know how it works out for you!